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In 1964, the Beach Boys had a hit record that started with the lyrics, “It’s not a big
motorcycle, just a groovy little motorbike.”

A half-century later, Honda has reinvented the groovy little motorbike for a new generation of
young riders. And it can’t make them fast enough to satisfy a swarm of buyers.

Dealers are sold out of the tiny Grom — a name derived from
grommet, for newbie surfer — and some report waiting lists of about 40 buyers. Many
shoppers are offering more than the asking price for the street-legal mini-motorcycle, which starts
at $2,999 — less than many scooters.

For Honda, the Grom represents a play to bring new customers to the company and to motorcycling
in general. As with the launch this year of its CB500 series, Honda is aggressively courting new
riders, young riders, female riders and minority riders — anyone outside the cohort of white male
baby boomers who have been the core buyers of motorcycles for decades.

“We need this market to grow,” said Bill Savino, manager of American Honda MC Press. “The
boomers are going out. We need new riders coming in.”

At Huntington Beach (Calif.) Honda, the strategy seems to be working. But owner Greg Guthrie
sees even broader appeal.

“Every day, we have three or four people asking about it,” he said. “I’ve been in the business
25 years, and I can’t remember a unit that has had a wider cross section of buyers. There is no
demographic for this bike. It’s everyone. That’s the demographic.”

The Grom sits and rides like a pit bike or a minibike — like the Honda CT90, Trail 90 or
MiniTrail. Honda sold those models by the tens of thousands in the 1970s.

But the Grom has the look of a shrunken street bike and comes equipped with disc brakes and a
four-speed manual transmission. Power comes from a 125cc motor. For a street-legal machine, it’s a
spare nubbin of a thing that, fully fueled, weighs only 225 pounds.

At that weight, there’s enough power to zip through city traffic, but not enough to keep up with
“big” motorcycles, like the ones the Beach Boys were singing about in
Little Honda.

The Grom is easy to ride, easy to park and, at a projected 100 miles per gallon, cheap to
operate. The base price is about half what the company gets for its bigger 300cc Forza scooter, and
just $400 more than the cost of the company’s stripped-down 50cc Ruckus.

The Grom’s size and relative lack of power mean “It’s not going to be a freeway motorcycle; the
engine’s too small,” said Ted Atkinson, general manager of Joe Carson Honda in Carroll, Ohio, which
has one of the bikes in its showroom.

“But it’s a little late in the year” for sales in Ohio, Atkinson said. “We had it in time just
to take to the fair in the second week of October. Probably from the weather, it’s not going to
happen until spring. Then we’ll see. I think it will be a thing on college campuses and inner
cities.”

While celebrating the success of their little motorcycle, Honda executives admit they did not
anticipate the Grom’s popularity.

“We thought it would do well, but we’ve been taken aback by the response,” said Jon Seidel,
assistant manager of American Honda MC Press. “We have dealers with waiting lists of 30 and 40
people.”

At Honda of North Hollywood (Calif.), sales manager Larry Ingraham said he has 10 people on a
waiting list, 30 units on order, and not a single Grom in his showroom.

“Honda may have missed the mark on quantity,” Ingraham said. “I don’t think they knew what kind
of reception they were going to get.”

Ingraham has heard of customers paying as much as $5,500 to get their hands on a Grom. Several
used Groms were for sale on Craigslist and eBay this week for $4,200 or more.

Many shoppers who might have put down a deposit for a Grom change their mind, Guthrie said, when
they’re told the new units won’t be in showrooms until perhaps December or even January.

To advertise its Super Cub — the lightweight 1960s step-through machine that inspired that Beach
Boys song — Honda used the slogan: “You meet the nicest people on a Honda.”

For the Grom, the company is taking particular aim at the younger rider. One piece of Grom
promotional material reads, “With your own wheels, you can bag the bus and forget about having to
beg for rides from your friends or — shudder — your mom.” An accompanying photo shows a kid holding
a skateboard.

One dealer observed that, at such a low sticker price, the Grom isn’t likely to be a massive
revenue generator. Instead, it is designed to buy the company a bigger share of the U.S. market,
where it often has been the dominant Japanese motorcycle maker.